Hairy Tales Of The Northwest’s Mythic Man (Sasquatch)

Posted: February 8, 2009

By: Tanya Davidson

It’s been close to a decade since I started exploring the outdoors, and I have come a long way from the city girl who had never set foot in a canoe or off a well-signed, gravelled trail—yet the true backcountry still unnerves me. As beckoning as nature is, it also boggles with its sheer adversity, challenges with its imperviousness, and taunts with its secrets. Our Northwest wilderness harbours histories that reach back at least as far as the end of the last ice age, ten to twelve thousand years ago.

The original inhabitants of this land, generation upon generation of coastal and inland First Nations, spoke of upright, long-haired wild men (and women) of the woods. Many early European settlers and their descendents encountered a similar beast (and/or his tracks, smells, sounds, or nests). Houston, Babine Lake, Grassy Plains, Moricetown, Hazelton, Terrace, Masset, Juskatla, Skidegate, Klemtu, Hartley Bay, Kemano, and Kitimaat are just some of the many locations where the Sasquatch has popped up.

To read the entire magazine's story on Sasquatch/Bigfoot, please go to the magazines website at: *Northword Magazine - Hairy Tales Of The Northwest’s Mythic Man*